Sea, Bury the Wine-Dark Dreams

Patch: 3.5 · Chapter: Before Their Deaths · Mission 06 of 7Previous: Nectar, Saturate the Hollow Treecore · Next: Captives, Behold the Expanse Beyond Light

Official summary

Beneath the waters of Styxia, through the power of Time, you witnessed the truth of the first Flame-Chase Journey: Cerydra sacrificed five hundred Chrysos Heirs to gain control of Law, severing ties with Hysilens. Deep in the ocean floor stood a tombstone commemorating both Flame-Chase Journeys. In the face of Lygus's mockery, you chose to stand firm on your beliefs and continued the unfinished mission of the heroes.

Synopsis

The mission unfolds entirely within the drowned city-state of "Warbling Shores" Styxia, as the Trailblazer descends through a submerged, ocean-worshiping palace toward the Vortex of Genesis, guided only by the disembodied Voice of Lygus. Almost everything the Trailblazer encounters here is a replayed past — a re-creation of the catastrophic first Flame-Chase Journey, preserved as an illusion by a siren's song and made walkable through Oronyx's Miracle of Time. The heroes seen and heard are memories; the deaths happen in flashback. The Trailblazer's own acts in the present are simple: walk, banish one mad siren, rewind broken Chrono Vessels, libate two graves, and finally break the tombstone.

The palace where time stopped

The opening text sets the elegy: a grand ship laden with glory and five hundred heroes once set sail from Styxia into the misted waves, and days later the ocean fell silent — no wave rose again for a thousand years. Lygus urges the Trailblazer to step away from a "false banquet" and onto "that bloody stage."

Entering the submerged palace — "the sanctuary connected to the Vortex," and once "the battlefield of the first Flame Chase" — the Trailblazer notices time has slowed to a crawl. Lygus explains the phenomenon and, in doing so, delivers the mission's framing reveal:

Lygus's Voice: Her exuberant song halted the passage of time in this place, imprisoning my body and shielding my soul from deterioration, all just to await your return.

So Lygus himself is a prisoner here, held frozen by a siren's song across the centuries so that he would survive intact until the Deliverer came to face him. The "she" is not yet named.

The lovers and the mad sea siren

The Trailblazer meets memory-shades of past heroes who greet the returned "Deliverer" with joy: "Dux Carminum" Verginia and "Dux Helkolithist" Apollonius. But the reunion is corrupted — a "Sea Siren" (the boss Lady of Crashing Waves, with its Servants of Tides) menaces the couple, drawn by "love steeped in death." Lygus notes the twisted time and space "reflect her confusion." The Trailblazer banishes the siren in battle; Lygus dismisses the intervention as "a remnant of history" and "just another equally futile echo."

The victory is hollow. Verginia and Apollonius were already dying in the recreated past. Verginia boasts weakly that she chased the enemy away, then admits she can go no further; Apollonius apologizes for what he let happen to her. She answers that she is glad to die by his side. Lygus supplies the context: during the first Flame-Chase Journey the legion stormed Styxia, and tens of thousands of sea sirens surged from the River of Souls to crash over the heroes — "The hell before you... is the re-creation of that very battle."

If the Trailblazer lingers, Verginia recites the final poem she never delivered — a verse about a sage whose form is fractured (rings of time, a bird's song that cannot pass "the fractures in his form"), an image that reads as an elegy for the black-tide-cracked world. Apollonius tells her she looks beautiful when she reads poetry; her voice fades away mid-recitation "like wind slowly dying away," and he stiffens into "a benevolent statue frozen in time," bidding her see you... in the new world. The pair lie side by side "for the first time, never to wake from this dream again."

The vanguard's deaths — Seneca and Labienus

Deeper in, two more first-journey heroes appear: "Dux Brumalis" Seneca (storm-wielder) and "Dux Fragoris" Labienus (thunder-warrior). They welcome the "Deliverer" back, one teasing that he was "playing dead." After the Trailblazer uses Oronyx's Miracle to advance the vision, their deaths play out — and split the two loyalties at the heart of the mission.

Labienus dies calling for the Imperator, begging her to witness his gallant deeds, pledging his life so she can "finish the conquest of stars." Seneca, dying beside him, curses that same Imperator as a "tyrant" who knew from the start how this battle would end and spent them deliberately. Seneca vows to wait in the River of Souls to slice off the crown-wearing head, insisting to the last: "I never bowed to you... or fate." Labienus refuses to believe it — "she would never betray our dreams... or Amphoreus" — and dies loyal. "For the first time, they coexist in harmony." Lygus muses that "a sovereign and the sword at her side" have "countless counterparts across the cosmos," and most such stories end in tragedy.

The truth of the Trial of Law

At a marked memory, the Trailblazer overhears the pivotal conversation between the two who lived: the sword Hysilens ("Dux Gladiorum") and her sovereign, the Imperator Cerydra.

Hysilens, aghast, demands why Cerydra sent the vanguard to die when she herself had been ordered off to "seal the sea route and handle threats from the rear." Cerydra answers with chilling calm — their golden blood was not spilled for nothing; the other dukes "paved the road for me to become the god of Law." She reveals the requirement of the Trial of Law:

Cerydra: The one who wishes to bear Law must purge this world of its curse, and offer the blood of the accursed as sacrifice...

Cerydra explains she puzzled long over what Talanton meant by "blood of the accursed," and found her answer: the Chrysos Heirs themselves are the accursed ones. She echoes the claim the Trailblazer heard from Lygus a chapter earlier — "our golden blood is the agent of Destruction, the antithesis of the world's fate" — attributing it to "that arrogant Theoros." To seize Law she had to sacrifice her own heroes; a glorious death, she says, "was the final gift I could give them."

When Hysilens accuses her of murdering their comrades through cold-blooded scheming and asks whether their loyalty meant nothing, Cerydra does not flinch:

Cerydra: Losses are a constant on the Flame-Chase journey, among which even life itself holds little value.

She spared Hysilens, she reveals, only because Hysilens alone can uphold Phagousa's divine authority — the Ocean pillar. Then she offers a genuine choice: drive the blades through her heart as a betrayed subject, or stand with her and "sever the ocean's last breath." She names herself ruthless and cruel but never a hypocrite:

Cerydra: Know this: I am ready to sacrifice everything for the ambition to conquer the sea of stars!

Lygus caps the scene: the "brutal Imperator was willing to spill the blood of five hundred heroes to complete the Trial of Law," while "my poor warden" — Hysilens — was only beginning her suffering. He pointedly refuses to tell the Trailblazer what Hysilens chose or whether Cerydra still lives ("I'm no storyteller"). Whatever defiant retort the Trailblazer offers (that these heroes are nothing like Lygus, that the Trailblazer will not falter), Lygus repeats that he "gave up on using words to solve conflicts two thousand years ago" — but he will exploit any crack in the Trailblazer's conviction, because if one appears, "my victory is already assured." He turns the page of Time and sends the Trailblazer deeper toward "the very bottom of the abyss."

The deeper abyss and the buried graves

The path ahead is underwater; the Trailblazer must use the Oronyx Orb to restore a shattered Chrono Vessel from the past. Shattering the recovered vessel lets the "stagnant pool start to flow again" — "just like the broken fate of Amphoreus" — and drains the water to reveal a hidden gate down to the Vortex. Along the way Lygus narrates the fleet's doom: dragged into the deep, the "flame-chasing nymphs reduced to ash," a golden death the Deliverer must witness.

Descending to "the silent graves," the Trailblazer catches later fragments of the Cerydra–Hysilens memory. Hysilens has gone silent; Cerydra needles her ("starting to doubt your decision?"). Hysilens answers that after the trial "there's nothing left between us," and declines to keep "swimming toward the stars": "I was always a creature of the sea. The stars in the sky... were never meant for me."

At the gravestones, Lygus stages his own oldest memory — a scene replayed countless times over the centuries. Lygus's Memory taunts Hysilens's Memory, addressing her as "Dux Gladiorum" and himself as her prisoner. He confirms the shape of the tragedy:

Lygus's Memory: It was here you gorged out the Coreflame of Ocean from Phagousa's body. It was here you and that Imperator both completed apotheosis, becoming pillars of Amphoreus. And after that... You drove your blade into her heart, a loyal subject turned regicide, a demigod committing deicide, or so the history books paint that tragedy.

And yet, a thousand years later, Hysilens still guards the Imperator's grave, still bound by loyalty — which makes her, Lygus suggests, as much a prisoner as he is. He gloats that he has "waited thirty million lifetimes" (the 33,550,336 cycles) and that loneliness, "an old friend" to a "prisoner of the cave," is instead corroding Hysilens's mind — will she "regress into one of those lost, mad sirens?" Hysilens admits the shackles — "loyalty, curse, the fall of my kin, and this endless waiting" — are too heavy for "a fish that cannot perceive any light," and that she lacks the resolve to keep waiting for "that person's return." Lygus asks how long until the "Deliverer from beyond the sky" — his executioner — arrives, or whether they will come at all. Hysilens says she does not know.

Helektra's vow

The memory then reveals what Hysilens did choose. Addressing the dead Cerydra, she vows this is the last time she carries out her decree. Ever since Cerydra made her Dux Gladiorum, her music has belonged to others — she used the siren's song to lure the unwary into illusions for Cerydra's schemes. Now, at last, she will sing for herself:

Hysilens's Memory: Now... let the siren "Helektra" sing for herself. Let me step into an endless dream of my own making.

Hysilens's Memory: O great ocean! I offer you the rest of my clarity and my freedom, in exchange for the strength to stand against the "Nihility"... and honor the sacrifices of the fallen heroes.

This is the sacrifice that froze the palace in time: Helektra bound herself into a self-wrought slumber, trading sanity and freedom to seal the Theoros (Lygus) and hold him until the Deliverer could return to execute him. She addresses the Trailblazer directly across time as "Gray Fry, Deliverer from beyond the sky": when they ride the current of time here, they will hear her solo, and it will guide them to the heart of the world. She reminds them that to wake someone from a siren's voice one needs Phagousa's Honeydew — "the gift I once gave you" — and asks that they pour that honey brew upon her grave when they return. The grave, she says, "holds the story of all of our struggles and sacrifices... the prelude Amphoreus wrote for your return, carried forward through a thousand-year relay." When the mourning ends, she will wake, and the Trailblazer should follow the echoes to find her — and then:

Hysilens's Memory: And together, we'll bring judgment upon the sinner who defiled the Erudition.

Hysilens is thereby established as the Trailblazer's future ally against Lygus.

Lygus declares the finale near: "33,550,336 cycles and 4,931 years later, Amphoreus' final curtain is ready to fall." He belittles the heroes as "shadows within the cave" who only "mimic 'life' outside its walls," a "futile effort steeped in sorrow." The Trailblazer refuses the framing outright:

(Trailblazer): Enough! They were no shadows... Everything they did shattered the darkness of this cave and unearthed the Coreflame of the Trailblaze... And now, with that Coreflame, I'll light the dawn of Amphoreus!

Lygus, surprised that the Trailblazer still "choose[s] the will of the Paths" as their answer, disagrees but respects the tribute, retracts his mockery, and — "in the name of Theoros who saw all destinies in this world" — asks to join the mourning before they face each other to decide "whose flame will rise with this new dawn."

The two libations and the tombstone

The Trailblazer libates honey brew on the great gravestone, which commemorates both Flame-Chase Journeys.

The first Flame-Chase Journey section honors heroes whose "fates were not foretold by prophecy, yet they bore no shame in their insignificance." The inscription lists Labienus (b. 3743, d. 3960), Seneca (b. 3749, d. 3960), Verginia (b. 3853, d. 3960), Apollonius (b. 3704, d. 3960), and, at the epitaph's end, Cerydra the Imperator, the Demigod of Law — Deceased Light Calendar 3960. The Trailblazer pours the brew; Lygus notes that "through a brutal sacrifice, they lit the stars of Law in this world," entrusting their dream of riding among the stars "to the hero yet to come."

The second Flame-Chase Journey section honors those "born whenever the world needs them" to "answer their calling" — the cast the Trailblazer has known:

• Terravox, Demigod of Earth — b. ~2000 years before the Light Calendar, d. 3961
• Aglaea, Demigod of Romance — b. 3860, d. 4210
• Castorice, Demigod of Death — d. 4253
• Mydeimos, Demigod of Strife — b. 4071, d. 4284
• Tribios, Demigod of Passage — b. 3720, "the last piece of her" d. 4295
• Cifera, Demigod of Trickery — b. 3942, d. 4534
• Anaxagoras, Demigod of Reason — b. 4065, d. 4534
• Hyacinthia, Demigod of Sky — b. 4297, d. 4602
• Helektra, "Demigod of Ocean" — b. 3860, deceased [left blank]

Helektra's unfinished death date marks her as the last demigod still "alive," dreaming in her siren-slumber. The Trailblazer libates for these heroes too; Lygus reflects that across "a relay spanning a thousand years" — and the same thirty million futile cycles — they remained "steadfast in fulfilling their duty to the experiment... unchanging, unwavering."

Lygus then confirms the sleeper's identity. Bathed in Phagousa's Honeydew, "she will awaken from her thousand-year dream and sing the final song of her mission" — the voice the Trailblazer recognizes: Hysilens. The tombstone, Lygus says, is "the anchor of the siren's illusion, a sigil Helektra used to bind herself," and also the "microcosm of Amphoreus itself" he proclaimed at the show's start:

Lygus's Voice: A group of prisoners bound themselves in a cave, crowning their suffering with heroism, an epic staged with shadows and echoes.

He tells the Trailblazer to destroy the tombstone and end the illusion; the Theoros "will take his leave for now," and their next meeting will be "the moment that decides the fate of Amphoreus and the entire cosmos."

Ending the illusion

The Trailblazer uses Time to restore and then break the gravestone — "the prison warden's dream is nearly over. And the prisoner will soon be freed," Lygus says, headed "to the final execution ground, where I shall be executed, or be the executioner." Hysilens's fading voice promises, "This world and I shall halt here... until we meet again."

Approaching "her who is waiting for you," the Trailblazer declares themselves before "the last demigod." Each hero-memory gives a final benediction as the Trailblazer passes:

• Verginia: "Go forth. For the hopes of humankind!"
• Apollonius: "Go forth. For the duty of deliverance!"
• Seneca: "Go forth. For the belief in Flame-Chase!"
• Labienus: "Go forth. For the golden blood's glory!"
• Cerydra: "Go forth..."

In the closing cutscene, Hysilens declares, "Seems like my feast is over. It's now your turn to perform," handing the confrontation with Lygus to the Trailblazer as the mission ends.

Key characters

• Trailblazer — Descends through Styxia toward the Vortex, using Oronyx's Miracle to walk the recreated past. Rejects Lygus's "shadows in a cave" nihilism, reaffirms that the heroes' deaths "unearthed the Coreflame of the Trailblaze," and vows to light Amphoreus's dawn. Called "Gray Fry" / "Deliverer from beyond the sky" and is Hysilens's designated ally and Lygus's designated executioner.
• Lygus (Lycurgus) — The Theoros, revealed here to be a prisoner frozen in Styxia by Hysilens's siren-song for the centuries needed to survive until the Deliverer arrives. Narrates the whole mission, staging memories to erode the Trailblazer's conviction; ends by retracting his mockery and calling the coming confrontation the decider of Amphoreus and the cosmos.
• Cerydra — Imperator and first leader of the Flame-Chase Journey; Demigod of Law (d. 3960). Revealed to have deliberately sacrificed five hundred Chrysos Heirs — including her loyal dukes — to satisfy Talanton's Trial of Law, which demands "the blood of the accursed." Spared only Hysilens (to bear Ocean), and offered Hysilens the choice to kill her or join her. Ruthless but self-avowedly no hypocrite.
• Hysilens / "Dux Gladiorum" / the siren "Helektra" — Cerydra's sword and, after the trial, her killer (regicide/deicide). Demigod of Ocean, having gouged the Coreflame of Ocean from Phagousa. Guards Cerydra's grave for a thousand years and binds herself in an endless siren-dream to seal Lygus, trading her clarity and freedom "to stand against the 'Nihility.'" Vows to wake once mourned and help the Trailblazer "bring judgment upon the sinner who defiled the Erudition." The last demigod still "alive."
• Verginia ("Dux Carminum") & Apollonius ("Dux Helkolithist") — A first-journey couple who die together in the recreated siren battle; Verginia recites her unfinished final poem as they fade side by side.
• Seneca ("Dux Brumalis") & Labienus ("Dux Fragoris") — First-journey vanguard who die divided: Labienus loyal to the Imperator to the last, Seneca cursing her as a tyrant and vowing revenge in the River of Souls.

Lore notes

• The first Flame-Chase Journey (fully depicted for the first time). Led by Imperator Cerydra, it ended in catastrophe at Styxia around Light Calendar 3960, when tens of thousands of sea sirens surged from the River of Souls and annihilated the "Flame-Chase Army." Its heroes (Labienus, Seneca, Verginia, Apollonius, Cerydra) all died 3960; Terravox (Earth) died 3961. This is the failed predecessor to the second (Aglaea–Hyacinthia) journey the game has followed.
• The Trial of Law. Talanton's requirement, quoted by Cerydra: "The one who wishes to bear Law must purge this world of its curse, and offer the blood of the accursed as sacrifice." Cerydra interprets "the accursed" as the Chrysos Heirs themselves, sacrificing 500 of them to ascend. This resolves the long-open thread of who inherited Talanton's divinity: it was Cerydra, at the cost of the first journey's heroes.
• Golden blood = Destruction (corroborated in-world). Cerydra independently reaches the same claim Lygus made in 3.4 — that Chrysos-Heir golden blood is "the agent of Destruction, the antithesis of the world's fate" — attributing it to "that arrogant Theoros." It is now voiced by a demigod, not only Lygus, though whether it is literal truth remains contested.
• Hysilens = the Demigod of Ocean / "Helektra." She bears Phagousa's Coreflame. Her siren identity "Helektra" and her self-imposed dream are the mechanism sealing Lygus. Her death date on the tombstone is left blank — she alone endures.
• Lygus is a prisoner, not merely an audience. A key advance on the "Lygus's allegiance" thread: he is physically held in Styxia by Hysilens's magic, his body frozen and soul preserved so the Deliverer can reach and "execute" him. The heroes of Amphoreus "worked together to chip away my strength," but he insists his will — and thus his freedom — remains intact.
• "Nihility." Hysilens offers her freedom to the ocean "in exchange for the strength to stand against the 'Nihility.'" The capitalized term is new to Amphoreus's vocabulary here and likely glosses the black tide / Destruction (Irontomb) the demigods resist. [?] Whether "Nihility" denotes a distinct force or is a localization of Destruction is unclear.
• "Prisoners in a cave" motif. Lygus repeatedly recasts Amphoreus as Plato's cave: "A group of prisoners bound themselves in a cave, crowning their suffering with heroism, an epic staged with shadows and echoes." He calls the tombstone "a microcosm of Amphoreus itself," continuing the 3.4 framing of the world as a simulation ("shadows" mimicking real life). The Trailblazer rejects the reduction: "They were no shadows."
• Coreflame of the Trailblaze. The Trailblazer claims the heroes' sacrifices "unearthed the Coreflame of the Trailblaze," which they will use to "light the dawn of Amphoreus." A notable new phrasing tying the Path of Trailblaze to Amphoreus's salvation. [?] Its exact nature versus the twelve Titan Coreflames is unstated.
• Chrono Vessel + Oronyx Orb. New Time-Miracle items: the Trailblazer restores shattered Chrono Vessels from the past with the Oronyx Orb, then breaks them to let the "stagnant pool" of frozen time flow, draining water to open the hidden gate to the Vortex.
• Phagousa's Honeydew / honey brew. The libation used both to mourn the graves and to wake a sleeper from a siren's voice; Hysilens gave it to the Trailblazer earlier ("the gift I once gave you"). [?] Presumably received in the preceding mission "Nectar, Saturate the Hollow Treecore" — worth cross-checking.
• The tombstone's Latin epitaphs (Somber Altar of Candles). Two monuments in Amphoreus Script paraphrase the Thermopylae epitaph of Simonides. Verse 1 (broken during the mission): "O stranger, announce to Okhema that we lie here, obeying their customs; the lion is the tomb, but death is the wolf — it did not take us" (the lupus/wolf evoking Lycurgus/Lygus). Verse 2: "We were turned into flames; we burned the rotten thrones, and in the ashes of the world you turn, we kindle a sun the gods never possessed" — the Flame-Chase's defiant self-immolation motif.
• Timeline note. Lygus dates the moment: "33,550,336 cycles and 4,931 years later, Amphoreus' final curtain is ready to fall," aligning the Light Calendar (ending ~4931) with the Eternal Recurrence count from 3.4.
• Connections:
  • Advances the first-Flame-Chase / Cerydra thread (introduced in 3.2/3.4 memory only, digest cast note): Cerydra and Hysilens (= Dux Gladiorum, the "nameless deep-sea swordmaster" of 3.4) are now fully dramatized, and Hysilens is revealed as the Ocean demigod and Lygus's jailer.
  • Resolves open thread #12 (who inherited Talanton's divinity) — Cerydra, Demigod of Law.
  • Advances open thread #7 (Lygus's allegiance): he is a bound prisoner and the Trailblazer's coming duel-partner, not a free "reader."
  • Continues the simulation / "cave of shadows" framing from 3.4 and the golden-blood = Destruction recast (open thread #8), now voiced by Cerydra.
  • Sets up the next mission: Hysilens will wake, and she and the Trailblazer will together "bring judgment upon the sinner who defiled the Erudition" (Lygus).

Sources

• Sea, Bury the Wine-Dark Dreams — HSR Wiki

Hindsight (full arc)

• [?] resolved — who holds Law: Cerydra, Demigod of Law, who sacrificed 500 Chrysos Heirs (Talanton's "blood of the accursed") to ascend. The single law she rewrote — left blank here — resolves in 3.6 as her failsafe law (any anomaly during Era Nova eliminates all foreign elements and completes Era Nova through pure Destruction).
• Foreshadowing — Hysilens's vow: her pledge to "bring judgment upon the sinner who defiled the Erudition" pays off in m07, where she and the Trailblazer fight Zandar; Cerydra's promised "ocean at the boundaries of this world" is delivered in m07's Epistle.
• Reread with the reveal — the tombstone: the epitaph's Terravox "d. 3961" (and the framing of Helektra as "the last demigod still alive") is 3.5's local record; the full arc shows Terravox actually survived to LC 4931 and bequeaths the Earth Coreflame to Dan Heng (3.6). The inscription is Helektra's siren-sigil, not ground truth.
• Reread — the cave / simulation: Lygus's "prisoners bound themselves in a cave... an epic staged with shadows and echoes" continues 3.4's Scepter reveal; the Trailblazer's "They were no shadows... [they] unearthed the Coreflame of the Trailblaze" prefigures the thirteenth Path, the Trailblaze (Trailblazer + Cyrene), consecrated in 3.7.